Amazon – How It Started

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All big companies start somewhere, and Amazon happened to have an interesting start. Before it became the billion dollar company it is today, it started in the house of Jeff Bezos, the creator of Amazon. Through hardworking employees and a loophole, Amazon managed to be the company it is today.

It all started in July 1994, when Jeff Bezos thought of Amazon in Seattle, Washington. When it was officially launched in 1995, Amazon was just an online website that sold books. Amazon grew fast, faster than Bezos expected. In the early days of Amazon, a bell would ring in the office whenever a customer bought a book, and people would gather around to see if they knew the person. Within a few weeks of business, the bell was ringing so frequently that it had to be disabled. Because the office of Amazon was in Bezos’s garage, the servers that the company used required too much power. In fact, his wife wasn’t even able to run a hair dryer or a vacuum in the house without blowing a single fuse. Early meetings for Amazon were held in a local Barnes & Noble. In the first month of its release, Amazon had sold books to people in every state of the United States and 45 other different countries.

Before Amazon got its name, Bezos had many ideas for his website name. Bezos favored the names Cadabra and Relentless. Todd Tabert, the very first lawyer for Amazon, talked Bezos out of Cadabra because it sounded too much like Cadaver, especially when said on the phone. Relentless was also favored, but Bezos liked the name Amazon better. However, going to relentless.com today redirects to Amazon.The reason why Bezos picked the name “Amazon” was because he wanted to be known for having the largest variety of books, just like the world’s largest river. Also, the Amazon logo has an arrow going from the first “A” to the “z,” showing that they sell everything from “a to z.” Also, the arrow represents a smile, showing the expression of buyers when receiving their items.

If it wasn’t for an obscure book about lichens, Amazon may not exist today. Book distributors require companies to order at least 10 books at a time, but Amazon really only needed to buy 1 book at a time. They didn’t need that much inventory, nor did they have much money to buy the books. However, the workers developed a loophole.Though it said that they needed to ORDER 10 books, it didn’t mean they needed to RECEIVE that many. By ordering 1 book that they need and 9 copies of an obscure lichen book that was always sold out, Amazon managed to keep up their work.

Amazon is a big company today, but it had an interesting start. Through hard work and a few tricks, the company grew to be the multi-billion dollar company it is today.